Still Minimum Wage Podcast

It's our season 3 finale!

Sam and Fifa drop back in the podcast to update you on what happened in their entrepreneur journey this year and give a preview of what's coming next in life, and for the Still Minimum Wage Podcast.

Fifa shares where she made the biggest strides in her business: from having shiny object syndrome to making hard choices to protect her business. 

Courtney also confesses what the pivot from solopreneur to being business married to Sam has been like and how she got through one of the most anxious years of her life. 

But we end on a positive note: Our special guest Lisa stops by for a special announcement too!

What do you say to taking chances? When we signed up for the entrepreneur life, we also signed up to saying yes to a series of risks, chances, and making decisions. 

Daily there are small and big things that we decide in our business. They may scare us when we don't have anyone to talk them through which is why Fifa Tran of Fei Modern, Joanne Ly of Minima Basics and Sara Vartanian wanted to join the Still Minimum Wage podcast to share their risky experiences, how they make decisions, and how to to get over taking a risk that doesn't pay off the way you hope it will. 

"Community over competition" is a common saying in the entrepreneur space but for the female entrepreneur, community is one important component of sticking with the business and not giving up: because the support through empathy that we can give each other makes us feel less alone. 

Let’s talk money money money today. Landing on your pricing can be a huge source of insecurity and stress for you in your business. We put pressure to get it right: charge to little and you end up burnt out and if you charge too much you could price yourself out. The common advice given to solve that is to "charge your worth" - however, we are questioning that advice and talking about our mistakes with charging for our services with our panel that has over 25 years of combined experience. 

Sara Vartanian, Kaysha Weiner, Shavavian Allister, Michelle A. Whyte and Courtney Chow each share how they first approached charging for their services, times they regretted giving discounts and how to mentally prepare yourself for getting rejected. 

We also have two recommendations at the end of the episode for books to help with your own mindset. 

Not all launches are equal which means that you don't need a 5 figure launch of a service to be successful. 

The reality is that launching is a scary part of selling our services and that's why we went to the pro to wrap our mind around how to do it without feeling sleezy or inauthentic. Sara Vartanian is a launch copywriter and shares not only some unique approaches to launching some services but also our we can adjust our mindset about what a successful launch looks like...and the reality is that it can mean whatever you want it to, and you don't have to follow the blueprint of celeb entrepreneurs. 

By learning to listen and gauge your energy, you can find the motivation to sell your services with heart. 

When you have a million things going on in your head as you try to run your business, how do you keep track of them so things actually get done?    

Getting organized feels like an obvious need for solopreneurs and today we’re talking about one of the ways to do that: which is bullet journaling. Our host Sam nerds out about bullet journaling with Lisa Aihara, the boss-lady at Ellette Studio to talk about the importance of recording your wins and to do it in a way that allows flexibility. 

We have to do it all and do it for as cheap as possible when we first start is what a lot of us entrepreneurs think. And then when we have “quote un quote” made it we can bring on someone to help us and stop doing all the things. But is that really how outsourcing works when you’re an entrepreneur.

Gather round our table with our group of service providers, Jeanine Wilson, Nicole Toledo, Fifa Tran and Courtney Chow, who have both outsourced work in our own businesses, and worked with clients in an outsourcing capacity ourselves. 

Hear the good experiences that helped us in our businesses, which tasks you should outsource, what you need to consider when working with someone on your business, and the important question: "When should you outsource?"

How do you run a business on both the good and bad days when you are prone to anxiety and struggle to manage your mental health? Does that struggle make you a bad entrepreneur? 

When you work with people, it's a hard line to walk between being of service and being a people pleaser and that's why we NEEDED this conversation about boundaries with clients. 

Lisa Aihara, Maryn Masumiya, and Ashley Kang join Courtney to share the ways they've failed to say no to a client and regretted it and what they have learned in the process. 

With lots of giggles and a dose of group therapy, they also talk about how self-care practice and CEO days help to have a solid perspective on what their boundaries should be and be able to reframe objections. They share responses to asks in a way that isn't scary and prevents overextending themselves as entrepreneurs. 

Plus, lots of tips on how to communicate your boundaries to your clients!

What is it like trying to build a business in a boss babe culture while having parents that know and see your every move: on both the good and bad days? 

In this intimate interview between biz buddies, Jasmine Marie Ortiz and Courtney Chow, they share the struggles of building and proving to themselves and their families that they have actual businesses. They also reflect on how living at home has been beneficial to the start-up phase of their pandemic businesses and how they respond every time their parents send them a link to a job they should apply to. 

You’ve reached the end of your college career, and you want to pursue your entrepreneurial or corporate career dreams. But should you pursue your passion or pursue your paycheck? Or, do you have to choose?

Many college graduates are considering forgoing traditional 9-to-5 jobs and striking out on their own. But if you do decide to go this route, there are pros and cons to consider. To help with those comparisons, explore both sides of the debate.

The Still Minimum Wage roundtable guests Lisa Aihara and Wendy Leung join host Courtney Chow to talk about the realities of what entrepreneurship actually is like and share what their journeys have been to entrepreneurship after graduating and doing some career exploration even after they started their careers and give their advice to the class of 2022.

We take a beat to gather around the Still Minimum Wage studio to process and share our thoughts on the struggles, realities, and opportunities of being a woman of color entrepreneur in America. 

Collectively we are still figuring out what our opinions are and when to voice our opinions, along with supporting each other during a tragic week in the U.S. But we come together to share our stories as WOC and to share ideas for how we can use our brands and platforms to not just be businesswomen but to be an influence for good as we hold space for each other in processing our feelings. 

There are ebbs, flows, and seasons in small business, and hearing "no" or feeling like things aren't working out can set us back  If you ever feel like you're doing it all wrong anytime you hear "No" from a client, this episode will help you. As an entrepreneur of 20 years, Michelle A. Whyte (event planner of Ambiance Events and Chief Etiquette Officer) joins the Still Minimum Wage crew to give us some perspective on what is enough in terms of success and winning instead of absorbing pressure from the world. 

We talk about how to redefine what we perceive as rejection, to get comfortable with being patient, and review data to help understand what going on before we make big emotional decisions and the fact that you have permission to change your mind about who you are serving and what we're doing. 

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Becoming your own boss doesn't happen overnight. While we entrepreneurs dream of freedom, we don't realize how much our corporate schedule and life have shaped our perspective of working hard, titles, and managing our time to name just a few ways. 

Learning to be the queen bee and not just a little worker bee to run your own business might sound like a dream but it does take some time and mindset shifts. That's why we're going to be talking about transitioning to a CEO with Fifa Tran, and Jaime Bartol, leadership coach for women. 

We talk about how Moana was a leader that we admire, why we feel like we're wasting time even though we're not, how we view the leadership titles that we assign ourselves. 

Let's talk about making boss moves: by working ON your business and not just in your business. Ashley Kang from AHK Business Management joins us on this expert episode to give us permission to take care of ourselves with CEO days in our businesses in the Season 3 premiere of Still Minimum Wage. We're back this season and keeping it real with resources and conversations about mindset so that we can set ourselves up to succeed in the long haul. 

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Whether you call it a Mastermind or accountability, success as a solopreneur can be easier when you have a community of like-minded people to talk shop with. 

What do you do when people say they like what you're doing and admire your business but don't quite seem interested in working with you? You might have heard of the friend zone in dating, but it seems this can happen when running your own business too. In this episode, Courtney is in the hot seat. Her business challenge is not asking for the sale due to a disconnect between her current audience and her offer.

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